European Fujitsu Finals 1993-1999

The Fujitsu Cup is one of the more prestigious professional Go
tournaments in the world. It allows amateurs to play against the top pros.
For the first two years of the Fujitsu Cup (1988 and 1989) the European
representative could qualify for the Fujitsu Cup by winning a six round Swiss
tournament. Ronald Schlemper won both events. In 1989 (for the 1990 Cup) the EGF changed
the system: the European Grand Prix would decide the
representative. The best three results in one season selected the
European cannon-fodder (season 1989 Matthew Macfadyen, 1990 Victor Bogdanov, 1991 and
1992 Alexei Lazarev).

The sponsors were dissatisfied with the system, as one could predict
long before which player will win the qualification. So, it was
decided to hold a separate knock-out tournament for sixteen
players, for which only European passport holders could qualify. This
would present more drama and excitement.

These sixteen players were selected as follows: seven players through
direct qualification in seven of the larger Grand Prix tournaments;
the two best Europeans in the European Championships in Prague, the
three first placed in the Grand Prix, and in 1993 four players
selected by the EGF.

In the second Fujitsu Finals, Schlemper and Van Zeijst were joined by
Guo Juan, a third 7 dan amateur with Dutch nationality. Before she
came to Holland she played as a 5 dan professional in China. Together
with Matthew Macfadyen, multiple European Champion, these four seeded
players would meet in the semi-final at the earliest. But David
Schoffel, from Bonn, and Andrei Gomenyuk, from Moscow, put a halt to two
of the seeds in the first round. Gomenyuk forced Macfadyen to an early
resignation and Schoffel beat Schlemper by half a point. In the
quarter-finals Schoffel again beat his opponent, Catalin Taranu, by
only half a point. In the semi-final Van Zeijst proved too strong and
so we got the expected final with the expected result.

Compared to 1994 the field lost two strong candidates for the first
place. Both Ronald Schlemper and Catalin Taranu are presently residing
in Japan. Schlemper works there as an intern and studies a new
medical specialism. Taranu is living as a student professional in
Nagoya and is doing very well (he turned into professional in 1997 and
is now 2 dan). So the favourites were Rob van Zeijst and Guo
Juan. Being the 1994 finalists, they qualified immediately for the 1995
edition. The other participants qualified by being the best European
at one of the big GP Tournaments or by their three best GP
results. The list was completed by some EGF invitations. For the
pairing the official rating of the European Go Federation was
used. The results were not surprising. Every game had the expected
result according to the rating list. And thus the final was a rematch
of the year before, with the same result.

This year four of the participants were of professional strength. The
well-known Fujitsu competitors Rob van Zeijst (still living in Tokyo)
and Guo Juan were both present. So were Hans Pietsch and Catalin
Taranu. With the help of the EGF they both came over from Japan. Hans
Pietsch became professional at the Nihon Ki-in in Tokyo (two months
after the tournament) and Catalin Taranu became professional after
winning the professional qualifying tournament at the Nagoya branch of
the Nihon Ki-in. This was made officially in January 1997.

At the Fujitsu Finals Dmitri Bogatskii is a talented newcomer. He is
just 16 years old. Apart from him, the players in the finals are the
ones who have been dominating the European tournaments for years. Among
the strongest were Gherman from Romania, Gerlach from Germany, Heiser
from Luxembourg and Alexei Lazarev from Russia. Lazarev has been very
successful before the introduction of the new system with the Grand
Prix Finals in 1993. In 1991 as well as 1992 he won the Fujitsu Grand
Prix Tournament cycle. This year he unexpectedly lost in the first
round against Pierre Colmez.

The four 'semi-professionals' all reached the semi-finals. However not
without difficulties as can be seen from the game-records. In the
semi-finals Hans Pietsch surprised everyone except maybe himself. Guo
Juan was unable to keep up with him. Pietsch was the first to reach
the final. For a good part of the other semi-final most spectators
(but not Rob van Zeijst) thought the other finalist would be Catalin
Taranu. However Rob van Zeijst managed to pull through and reach his
fourth successive final.

In the final Rob van Zeijst beat Hans Pietsch by 5.5 points. So after
beating Schlemper in '93 and losing to Guo in '94 and '95, Van Zeijst
is again the winner. He will have another try at reaching the second
round in this year's Fujitsu Cup. Till now, the European representative
has always had little success in the Fujitsu Cup. Not one of them ever
reached the second round. Small wonder since the Cup is one of the
most prestigious tournaments in the world. However things may change
for the better. Rob van Zeijst last year beat strong opponents in the
preliminaries of two separate Korean professonial tournaments, Samsung
and Tongyang.

With a similair line-up as last year, four players of professional
strength and the rest renowned European top players, many people
expected again an interesting tournament. However, nobody could expect
the excitement and the upsets as they were this time.

Round 1 saw the biggest upset, Hans Pietsch, strong favorite for a
final place (like last year), lost by resignation to the
seventeen-year old Emil Nijhuis. This was a huge dissappointment for
Hans Pietsch, because he came to win this time, after being runner-up
last year.
Surprisingly, all Russian participants were eliminated too, so the
quarter finals started with three Romanians, three Dutch, a Pole and a
Ukrainian. And this Ukrainian guy, Dmitrii Yatsenko, was responsible
for the second main upset of the tournament. Four time finalist and
two time winner, Rob van Zeijst had a bad day. After a disastrous
start he almost came back in the game, but eventually he lost by 2.5
points.
In the upper half of the draw, both seeded players, Guo and Taranu,
came through. With an 16-9 record (1997) as a professional player, it
was interesting to see if Catalin Taranu could match Guo Juan. Taranu
won by 5.5 points to meet his friend and fellow countryman, Cristian
Pop in the final. Pop won by 1.5 points after a dramatic game, which
looked a winning game for Yatsenko for a long time. The final was
a relatively easy game for Taranu, who will bring Pop with him as
insei to Nagoya in January. With this win Catalin qualified for the
Fujitsu Cup, which will be played next year in Japan.